


Familiarity

by tisfan



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Familiars, Minor Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Shapeshifting, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-06-26 16:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Wanda’s job as a hedge witch keeps her busy, but not too busy to spend some time with Bucky.C3 Free Space, Bucky Barnes Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerofthewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerofthewolf/gifts).



Pietro zipped through the greenhouse, sending leaves and clippings flying. Wanda sighed, adjusted her hat, and waved the debris into calmness.

“Have you seen Bucky?” she asked the blur where her brother was. He was flipping back and forth between the door and the main compost heap. To be fair, she had assigned him clean up duty, and he was rushing through his chores as fast as humanly -- or Pietro-ly -- as possible. Just, usually Pietro waited until she was done in the greenhouse before trying to clean.

“Have you checked the trash cans?”

“Ha ha,” Wanda said. She eyed the herb basket, then waved a hand over it. A little more basil, she decided. The feelings she’d been getting around the Barton’s farm were  _ bad _ , and Laura was expecting another child.

Wanda wasn’t sure what was causing them, but a little basil and chamomile sprinkled over the threshold and a quick blessing ought to disperse them. If not, there were other, more direct magics that she could use, but there was no sense in swatting a fly with a Buick. It could just be a wind current through town that was accidentally attracting and picking up negative feelings. Or it could be a wandering ghost that could be gently moved along, or brought to peace.

It probably wasn’t malicious, or directed.

But with a child on the way, and Clint gone so often, someone had to look out for Laura.

Wanda brushed her hands off, hung the apron on the peg near the greenhouse door. “Love you all,” she told the plants, and then headed to the house.

While she would never admit it to her brother, she did check the trash on the way back to their house.

Bucky wasn’t there, even if he had been known to get into the cans if he could smell leftover food. Chicken, or bacon, especially.

Instead, she found him curled into a little grey ball in a patch of sunlight.

“You going to spend all day in that form?”

Bucky raised his head, twitched his ear. Opened his pale blue eyes, and then blinked slowly. 

“Love you, too, lazy thing,” Wanda told him, bending down to scratch between his ears. She offered him a fingertip, and he nuzzled at her. The cat purred, rough and loud, and eventually deigned to get up and strop himself against her calf.

“Mrrrp?”

“No, I can’t carry you,” Wanda told him, showing him the basket of herbs. “But I could use your help with this potion, so come on?”

Bucky sat down and washed his face, roughly licking his paw and scrubbing at his nose.

“World’s laziest familiar,” Pietro said, appearing in a whoosh of air and dust. Most of which settled on the cat, which had to be deliberate.

Bucky sneezed, shook all over, and straightened, turning into a man as he did so. He brushed dust off his clothes and gave Peitro a glare. “What, jealous?”

“Not at all,” Pietro said, smirking in that way of his. “I’m not the one who got stuck being a witch’s  _ pet _ .”

“He’s jealous,” Wanda said. She raised her chin and Bucky came, as helpless to resist her lips as a human as he was to resist her fingertip as a cat.

“I am what I am,” Bucky said, after kissing her thoroughly. Warlock, shapeshifter, and accidentally stuck his nose into Wanda’s familiar calling, which bound them together. A bond of love and mutual assistance; her power had increased ten-fold having such a powerful familiar.

And, as Bucky said, he was a warlock. If he’d wanted to break the bond, it wouldn’t have been terribly difficult for him, but he’d been curious about the young witch, fascinated with her, and eventually, fell in love.

Pietro was still cranky about having to share his twin sister. “I’m going to run over to the Barton’s and see if Laura needs a hand.”

“Thanks,” Wanda told him. “Tell her I’ll be by after this brews up, see if I can’t shake some of that malaise.”

“Will do,” and Pietro was gone in another cloud.

Bucky looked down in her basket, then up. “You’ve got anise in there, too. Brewing a love potion?”

“No, just…” Wanda blushed a little. “Clint gets worried that he’ll hurt the baby, which is just silly, and Laura starts feeling neglected. I’m just encouraging them to act on their love.”

Bucky took her hand and kissed her fingertips. “I might… be encouraged to act on it, too. Since your brother’s out of the house.”

“Let me put the basket down before you go--” She yelped as Bucky scooped her up, trying not to spill the precious herbs.

“I got you, kitten,” Bucky told her. He relieved her of the herbs and set them aside.

“You certainly do.”


	2. The Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cat!Bucky is Wanda's familiar, but how did they get that way...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after writing the preceding little vignette, I couldn't quite get away from the idea of Cat!Bucky familiar and I wanted to explore it a little more, so these three chapters actually take place about a year or so BEFORE the first chapter, I just wasn't quite sure how to link the stories.
> 
> Also, Chapters 2 & 3 fill my Bucky Barnes Bingo Y2: Family

Wanda waved her hand over the brewing potion, feeling the strength -- or, really, in this case, the lack thereof -- of the liquid.

“I need a familiar,” she decided. 

“Maybe you just need to be a better cook,” her brother pointed out from his seat at the table. Their father had made that table, years before the twins were even born, and it had a natural flair to it. Too pretty, really, to be shoved into the small add-on to the kitchen where they ate. It could have possibly graced a noble’s small summer breakfast room, it was that well-made, and Wanda had considered selling it a few times. They’d stand to make a good profit from it, but then they’d have nothing to eat off of, and they’d have sold the last of their father’s furniture.

She shook the thought away. “Cooking and potion making are not even remotely the same skill,” she said. Not that Pietro was much of a cook, either. He could make tea, and a bit of porridge, and any sort of sandwich.

“Well, then,” Pietro said, “you’re just bad at both skills.”

Wanda glared at him.

“What, you didn’t see that coming?”

“You’re so mean,” Wanda complained. She added another pinch of marigold to the extract, stirred. “It’s not going to be very potent, so use a double dose and make sure you eat something at the end of your journey.”

“You worry too much,” Pietro said. “I’ve made the dash up to the city and back hundreds of times.”

Wanda didn’t bother to argue with him. Pietro was an Adept and he depended on his one focus; speed. They both did. Pietro worked mostly as a messenger, delivering missives all across the land in a fraction of the speed it would take a horse and rider to make the same trip. It was, in fact, their only source of income.

Although there had been a few offers for Wanda’s hand in marriage, which would have come with at least a guarantee for her that she was fed and sheltered. But Wanda was… well, picky. She didn’t want to get married just to make sure she had a meal. 

That the time was coming where she might have to choose between hunger and happiness was something she fervently ignored.

She was trying to make her coins by brewing various potions and crafting protective amulets. And sometimes, if the spirit was in the right mood, she could speak with those who’d passed beyond the Great Veil. And while none of these abilities were particularly common, Wanda’s mother had passed on before teaching her child most of the craft. Wanda was left with nothing more than a rudimentary education.

Which meant she could brew and protect, but her potions were weak and her charms easily shattered. And while she wasn’t _useless_ , Whitehall’s Potionary, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hydra-corps -- which sold factory charms and batch potions for cheaper than Wanda could afford -- took most of her business.

“Slave labor,” she’d ranted before, and she rather expected she’d rant again. Hydra-corp had nearly a stranglehold on most of the magical abilities in that part of the world. If you worked for Hydra, you lived in the Hydra homes, you ate at the company stores, and you wore the company uniform. _Hail Hydra_ , indeed.

She decanted the potion into a simple glass flask, held it between her palms a moment to cool it down, and then corked it. “Here.”

“Do you need anything while I’m up in the city?”

Wanda checked her shelves, consulted her grimoire. As far as she could tell, she had all the supplies she needed to summon a familiar, and if one came, her potions and spells would be ten times more powerful than they had been before. A familiar added a touch of power, a degree of accuracy, a sliver of the arcane, to a witch’s magic. 

There were, of course, drawbacks. A witch was as bound to her familiar as it was to her, and the death of a familiar came with a terrible price. 

Only a few of the factory witches had familiars, kept locked up and safe inside company pens. But while that had fewer risks for the witch, it didn’t exactly make for a happy familiar.

“I’d ask you to get me animal supplies,” Wanda said, “but I don’t know what sort of creature I’ll summon--”

“If any,” Pietro said. 

“That, too. If it works, we may need to make a trip into town anyway.”

She could fail in summoning a familiar; if that happened, her magic would grow even weaker until at least an entire moon’s cycle had passed.

It was a risk. 

But she had a good feeling about the decision.

“Go on, I need privacy for the spell anyway.”

Pietro scoffed at her. “More like you want a lack of witnesses in case it goes badly.”

Wanda stuck her tongue out at him.

“Go on, act like a kid, I’ll bring you back a lolly,” Pietro teased. She added wiggling fingers to her rude face. Partially because Pietro really was being a jerk, and also because she wouldn’t mind a hard candy or three, and Pietro wouldn’t buy them if she asked him nicely. _Brothers_.

Pietro grabbed his satchel, kissed Wanda’s cheek. “Don’t burn down the house while I’m gone.”

Wanda made one more rude gesture in his direction, and then walked to the door -- Pietro already nothing more than a cool breeze -- to watch. She could barely see him, moving as quickly as he was. He would make it to the city, some hundred miles north, within the hour, although he would need to rest once he got there before he could come home again.

Also, the speed kept him from being waylaid by bandits; his missives were as safe as houses, since no one could catch him. Theoretically, at least. 

Wanda would have several hours before he’d gotten to the city, delivered his messages, ate a meal, and rested, before coming home again. Perhaps even until luncheon tomorrow.

She waited, not entirely sure for what. To gather strength, courage, or just the will to do what must be done.

Wanda sifted through her magical supplies; her mother’s copper brazier, herb packets that had been dried and were awaiting a burst of magical energy to activate them for their stored purpose. She selected pure water, a small bit of dried fish, seeds, and a plum fresh off their tree to tempt what creatures in the woods might serve her. 

Packing all of it into a bag, Wanda closed and latched the door, laying her hand on it to seal the small dwelling with magical wards. A truly determined thief could probably still get inside, or someone with an unlocking amulet, but they would leave behind traces that she could use to track them down.

It was generally safer not to meddle in the affairs of witches.

She didn’t go far, just enough so that the house was out of sight, the woods were calm and quiet. There was a little clearing she liked, just up the hill, to practice in. The grass there was soft, and she’d set several poppets around to protect the glade from evil influences. A whisper of magic from her hand over the grasses charged them again, kept them fresh. 

The very center was open to the sky, letting the sunlight in.

She set the brazier down, lit it, and then threw the herb packets into the coals to smolder and smoke.

Wanda pressed down with her magic until the earth itself responded, pushing her back up, so she could sit, cross-legged, in the air.

_Come, come, there is food here, and water. A warm lair and peace. Safety, protection. In exchange for service._

Some people thought magic was strange incantations and magic words, but in truth, there was nothing special about the words or movements. The magic was in herself, in the world around her. Herbs to influence and to hold her powers, polished crystal to save a spell, and that which was inside her, unique to her, the center of her magic, her soul.

And she cast her plea into the world, for any creature that would be willing to take what she offered -- food, shelter, safety -- and give her what she needed. 

A familiar was more than just an animal companion; a familiar was a friend, an aid, a spark and a catalyst. The familiar would be able to tap more directly into the power of the world, allow her to be able to better direct it. Strengthen her spells and fortify her abilities.

She just needed one to hear her. To trust her.

To come to her.

***

There were advantages to being a warlock -- that was to say, the natural result of celestials, angel, demon, djinn, the like, and witches. Bucky was faster than most people, he was stronger, tougher. He could use magic with a flair seldom seen in a human practitioner. He could shapeshift.

There were disadvantages, too. Whatever non-human creature had fathered him had enemies who would try to use him against his parent. He was also bound to whatever mortal laws and magical means that could confound the demonic side of him. He was pretty sure his father was a demon of some sort, as churches, holy water, and that sort of unpleasant thing bothered him. It wasn’t instantly fatal for him, like it might have been for a demon, but it wasn’t fun. And, apparently, he put off enough of an aura that he’d been removed from his mother when he wasn’t quite an adolescent and sold into perpetual slavery.

 _Hail Hydra_ , he thought, bitterly.

He’d managed an escape by the skin of his teeth, and was currently hiding out in an animal form since that made him harder to spot when someone was doing an aura sweep. But he was hungry and tired, and he didn’t have a safe place to sleep.

Bucky was exhausted. Trying to sleep as a cat was easy, except they wanted to sleep eighteen hours a day, and Bucky couldn’t afford that. By the time he’d found a safe place to rest, his cat-self was so on edge that he couldn’t stay asleep, jumping at every sound.

And he was hungry; the reason why cats slept all the time is that they used an absolutely ridiculous amount of energy hunting, and more than half the time, they failed.

Bucky didn’t dare switch back to a human form while he was still in Hydra’s territory, unless he had a well-protected den. So he had resorted to digging around in people’s bins for scraps.

Beneath his dignity, and if his father had ever shown any interest in his half-human child at all, Bucky had no doubt that he’d be ashamed.

Unfortunately, now he was also out of the city, which meant more mice and birds, but less scraps.

_… food, safety, shelter, love…_

Bucky tipped his head. It wasn’t a compulsion, he’d dealt with those before, and knew the bitter sweetness of being forced to comply by the voices in his head that sounded so sweet and punished him for every mistake.

This seemed… more like an offering. A bargain.

Well, he was tired and hungry, so he might as well see what it was, right?

The woman -- well, the witch -- in the clearing was young and pretty, with glowing white skin and soft hands. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and shiny in a way that made Bucky want to run his hands through it. She was sitting, cross-legged, near a small cauldron of some sort of bubbling goo. There was no fire, she kept the potion boiling with a simple spell, some sort of red mist that coiled around her.

She had a plate, a bowl, and a glass in front of her. Berries, plums, seeds, fish. An offering to whatever came by.

_… food, safety, shelter, love..._

Bucky ventured into the clearing, lurking in the shadow. What did the witch want in exchange? He opened his eyes to see her aura; she could be powerful, but she wasn’t. Limited by her fear of herself, by her lack of training. She’d been squeezing the merest drops of her power into bottles. So, what did she _want_?

He moved forward a little, drawn by the scent of fish, the clean water, the promises.

The witch took a deep breath, and her power coiled, restless, inside her. 

He was _really_ hungry.

_… food, safety, shelter, love…_

He crept even closer, keeping his body low to the ground. He knew she’d seen him, but it didn’t matter. She radiated calm, surety, serenity. She would take care of him. Give him everything he needed, everything he craved.

All she asked in return was his presence, his help.

He took another step, almost breathing on the food. He was so hungry, he was tired, he was weary with fear. He wanted to be safe, to be cared for, to be fed and cosseted and loved.

Bucky bowed his head, lowered it, and took a bite of the fish.


	3. The Bargain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y4 Found Family - Bucky Barnes Bingo

Wanda practically held her breath as the cat minced into the sacred circle, looked around warily, and then, finally, fed.

The whole world exploded into light.

Something was seriously wrong.

She was flooded with power, so much that she found herself levitating, mid-air, back arched, fingers spread so wide they ached, body and mind overwhelmed.

She was screaming and she didn’t know why. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t even scary. She would have expected to be scared, but her mind, in the center of her rioting body, was calm.

The cat uttered a hideous yowl, back bending, tail puffing up. He turned to flee, and then was likewise dragged into the air.

 _It’s all right_ , she told the cat, using the power of her mind, the link between them, trying to establish a _connection_. Nothing was all right, but the cat didn’t need to know that.

 _Oh, shut up, you stupid little witch. What have you_ done _?_

“What?” Wanda burst. Animals, even familiar-level ones, were not supposed to be able to _think in words_. Communication between a witch and her familiar was a time consuming process, part of bonding and growing together, and still, the cat should not ever be able to think at her in words; feelings, sometimes. A core concept, or an image. But coherent, understandable-- it just wasn’t _possible._

The cat shifted around, as if fighting with the unseen force that held him in the air. Shimmered. And turned into a man, crouched on the ground, panting for breath. “What did you do?”

He reached out--

“No, wait, don’t--”

\--grabbed Wanda’s lapels and dragged her down to the ground.

_Click._

Spell sealed.

“--touch me,” she finished. “Damn it.”

“Excuse you.”

“You touched me,” Wanda said, pulling back and away from him. “You sealed the spell. I can’t just cancel it out now.”

“This is your fault, now fix it!” the cat -- man -- whatever he was.

“I don’t know how,” Wanda wailed. Oh, this was a disaster. She could feel him, linked to her, _bound_. “How is that even possible, you’re _connected_ to me, I shouldn’t be able to do that to a human being.”

The man sighed. “Fuck.”

“How remarkably unenlightening,” Wanda said dryly.

“I’m not entirely human,” he said, brushing his shirt off and running one hand through his hair. His hand had silvery fingers. “I’m… a warlock. Half-human… half-- something else.”

“Demon, maybe,” Wanda said. “Or djinn. Summonable. Bindable. If not necessarily biddable.”

“Yeah, the hell with you if you think I’m biddable,” the warlock said and huffed. “I’m leaving--”

“Uh, you can’t--” Wanda tried to tell him before he bounced off the ward that sealed the circle. “Look, look, look, I didn’t mean to. I was trying to tempt a _familiar_.”

“Demons can be familiars,” the warlock said, slowly. “Imps and the like. You--”

“I can fix it,” Wanda promised. “I can, I just need to study, figure it out. It has to have happened before--”

“I could just kill you,” the warlock suggested.

“Uh, not that, well, I mean, me being dead, yes probably, but, even not to mention the fact that I’d much rather be alive than not,” Wanda said, talking as fast as she possibly could, “I don’t… think _you_ can. And even if you could, it’s not a very good idea. My death will incapacitate you, if we’re still bound together. Look. Okay, it’s not ideal, but can you at least let me try to break the bond?”

“You have no idea what’s not ideal about this,” the man spat. His fingers flexed like he wanted to circle her throat and squeeze, but he didn’t. “You have any idea how much trouble--”

“I’m getting the picture,” Wanda snapped. “Look, you came into my circle, that’s not my fault, there were any number of opportunities for you to go looking for food somewhere else.”

The man glowered at her. “I haven’t eaten in days, sorry that a free meal looked a little too good to pass up.”

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” Wanda huffed. “Just-- grab that, and we’ll go back to my house and I’ll start work on _fixing_ it. Which will be a lot easier if you could stop yelling at me.”

The man was already helping to clean up the magic spell components and the pot of herbal infusions when he made a tentative rumble in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t… you didn’t do this maliciously, but I’m scared, okay?”

“You don’t have to be scared,” Wanda said. “I’m not a danger to you. I don’t… uh, don’t think we got off on the right foot at all. My name’s Wanda.”

“Bucky,” the warlock said. “And I ain’t scared of _you_.” She might have been offended by that, but then Bucky’s stomach rumbled and he actually flushed at that. It was… it shouldn’t have been cute, but it was, and Wanda couldn’t help a laugh.

“You can tell me about it over lunch,” Wanda suggested.

Bucky puffed out a mouthful of air. It wasn’t quite a laugh, and the expression on his face wasn’t quite a smile, but it was _something_. An olive branch, maybe. “Lunch, yeah,” he said. “I’m _starving_.” The way he said it, Wanda was pretty sure he was not, in fact, exaggerating much. Curiosity picked at her, but it could wait until lunch.

“This way.”

Bucky walked a few paces behind her, a little to her left, like he was shadowing her. But she felt… protected, somehow. Like he was keeping watch. 

“My brother and I live here,” she said, as their feet found the path through the woods. “It was our parents’ house, but they died, back when we were children.”

“No aunts or uncles?”

“Not that we ever knew. We made do,” Wanda said. There had been odd jobs, offers. They’d had the money their parents left, although it was all gone now along with most of the family valuables. 

There had been a particularly bad few years where Pietro had stolen things, using his speed, and a potion or two of Wanda’s making, to keep from being seen. She wasn’t proud of that, and Bucky didn’t need to know. Things were better, now. 

“Nice place,” Bucky said as they entered the clearing. The trees provided some shelter from the weather, keeping the heaviest of snows off in the winter, providing shade in the summer. Her father had built the place, and it seemed at ease in the wood, complimenting nature rather than thrusting itself rudely away from the earth, repelling the trees.

Wanda gave the pot of beans and potatoes a stir, grabbing a wooden bowl from over the mantle. “It’s not much, bean soup and bread,” Wanda started, but Bucky had already snatched the bowl away and was eating noisily. “You weren’t kidding about being hungry.”

“Lady,” Bucky said, barely comprehensible between mouthfuls, “I been a prisoner of Hydra so long, I forgot what food is.”

Wanda put a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. “You poor thing,” she said. The root cellar held a few treasures, so she went down the rickety steps to grab a jar of jam, a few apples, and a tiny bit of leftover dried venison. It was still a poor offering, but it was what she had.

Bucky didn’t seem to mind, eating with intensity. They’d have to set traps, maybe she could catch something at the river in the fish nets. But Wanda decided it was fair, and just, given that she’d accidentally entrapped the man.

***

The first thing Bucky noticed -- well, after he finished filling his belly and slaking his thirst -- was that the strand of his vitality that hung out behind him like his damn tail… wasn’t.

The vitality was what a summoner would grab, when calling up a demon or rubbing a djinn’s home item. Like dragging a cat out backward by the tail, it mostly worked, except when it didn’t and the cat gave you a good raking for your cheek.

Bucky’s had been yanked so many times he wasn’t sure sometimes how it was still attached to the rest of him. Hydra’s inhouse magi were constantly using him, give me energy, aid this spell, bring me that. Freaking fetch-and-carry warlock, he’d been. Run ragged, barely fed, beaten, cowed into submission, and still, they yanked his tail, every single time.

Now…

Bucky turned all the way around in a circle, looking down his spine. 

He could see his _actual tail_ , that still seemed to be there, and still a little tender at the base, but fine. He’d spent so much time with his tail tucked in close to his body that he had trouble unkinking it at the end. But it was fine.

“What did you do to me?” Bucky demanded again.

“It’s a simple familiar spell,” Wanda said, poking through a huge tome.

“You said, I mean-- look, my Vitality,” Bucky said, waving a hand at something that wasn’t there.

“Oh, you’re fine,” Wanda said, like she was comforting a child. “You can only be summoned one at a time, you know. And someone will have to break our bond before-- well, you can’t even be sensed right now. The familiar bond is very strong.”

“Wait, wait,” Bucky said, and Wanda looked up from her book with a patently false projection of _patience_. “You mean, no one else can summon me, I’m… magically invisible?”

“In layman’s terms, I suppose so,” Wanda said. She moved her finger down the page of the book, reading again.

Bucky turned that thought over in his head a few times, considering. “So, what if you didn’t,” he said.

“What if I didn’t what?”

“What happens, if you _don’t_ break the bond?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” Wanda said, “and it’s very difficult to read when you keep interrupting. Most spells have a time limit for breaking them, so you--”

“Well, given my situation, you’re the lesser of two evils,” Bucky said.

“I’m not-- I’m not _evil_ at all,” Wanda protested.

“You enslaved me against my will,” Bucky pointed out.

“You were supposed to be a cat!” Wanda shrieked, looking offended. “And it’s not _slavery_ , it’s… an exchange of favors.”

“It’s only an exchange if the cat volunteers,” Bucky said. “Which, it didn’t. I didn’t. It was a trap, and a good one.”

“Which is the whole point of the research,” Wanda said, and her eyes were huge, and a little watery, like she was getting ready to cry, and Bucky didn’t really want to feel guilty that he’d hurt her feelings, but he had and he did.

“No, I get that,” Bucky said. “What I’m saying is -- if you break the spell, and I go back to my life and you go back to yours. I’m just as vulnerable to Hydra as I was before this. I have to spend my whole life as a cat, and still, I have to hope they don’t find me.” Which was sort of true; the Hydra seekers had to know they were looking for Bucky in cat-form, and then his summoning would work again. It probably wouldn’t take them terribly long to figure it out.

He’d been hoping for distance; if he could run out of their range, get enough space, and magical wards, between him and the summoner, he could probably evade them. For a while. But it would always be a life on the run.

“Hydra can be persistent,” Wanda said, which was only the truth.

“So, what happens-- if I stay?”

“And be my familiar?” Wanda’s eyebrow went way up.

“Theoretically,” Bucky said. “What was your plan?”

“My mother,” she said, “was a great witch. Even with Hydra discount shops everywhere, she made a good living, casting spells and making potions. I’m… not even half as good. I thought, with a familiar lending me strength, I might be able to… keep us going. My brother, he was born an Adept. He’s fast. Like, really fast. Right now, he runs messages, eighty wheels in any direction in an hour. That’s… how we have our money. But we need more. The taxes on the house--” She spread her hands. “I could get married, but I don’t-- Pietro and I are twins. No one who wants me to wife wants my brother living with us. And my parents married for love.”

“Romantic,” Bucky accused. “So. If I stayed, what-- what would you ask of me, and what would you give?”

“You want to stay a slave?”

“No, I want to strike a bargain,” Bucky said. “An exchange of favors. If I agree to it, it’s not slavery, right? So, tell me, little witch. What is it you want?” 


	4. The Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fills my Bucky Barnes Bingo Square Y4, Families of Choice

Wanda had never had such an easy time collecting ingredients and brewing a potion. Bucky, in his cat form, was able to cover more ground in the forest than anything with two legs. He could also sniff to see if the herbs were tucked under the shrubs, knowing where they were going to find any. Wanda always had to crawl around on hands and knees to look.

Bucky seemed to have some higher sense for quality, too. 

No more than an hour in the woods and she had everything she needed.

Bucky nudged her hand as she brewed, changing the portions. Wanda decided not to protest that this was the method, there was no point in having a familiar, unorthodox or not, if she wasn't going to listen to him.

She wasn't trying anything too fancy, not for a first experiment. A simple protection potion, meant to be drunk right before sleep, rendering a person mostly invisible to animals and people who might have meant them harm. 

If nothing else, it could be good for Bucky, who had seemed to think that Hydra might be coming for him. 

Hydra. Wanda sighed. Going against them was… going to be trouble.

In fact, Wanda wasn't sure she'd even ever heard of anyone who succeeded against them. Hydra was just too big to fail.

Or at least, that was what the kingdom always said whenever someone complained about Hydra’s unfair business practices.

Wanda directed her anger at the conglomerate into the potion.

 _Ease up there a bit_ , witchy woman, Bucky said inside her head. _We want to protect me, not make me flammable._

 _Can I do that?_ Wanda wondered. _I mean, not now, but that would be useful. In some circumstances._

_They all end up with the drinker naked and having no eyebrows, so you might want to reconsider your definitions of useful._

Wanda didn’t bother to hide the grumbling noises she made. One more pinch of foxglove and a little ginger to cover the taste, and-- 

Huh. The potion emitted a cloud of pink smoke that vaguely smelled like raspberries. It had never, ever done that before.

_Looks good. Let it simmer for ten minutes, then bottle that shit up and put a cork in it._

“All of it?” Wanda asked. She turned over the glass, watching the sands slip through the center and start piling up on the bottom. 

“Should be enough for four bottles,” Bucky said, stretching into his human form, as lithe and graceful and full of long, lazy limbs, as his cat. “Which will cover me for the better part of the month.”

“You’re good luck already,” Wanda said. She usually only got one useable bottle out of a batch of ingredients. Bucky was going to change their _lives_. Provided they all lived long enough to make a difference.

“Great,” Bucky said. “That pays for dinner for the week, a place to sleep and two kisses.”

Wanda could feel herself blushing. “I don’t know why you want those,” she complained.

“Ah, but doll,” Bucky said, putting his hands on her hips and drawing her in. “Those are for you.”

She wasn’t sure at what moment she decided, or knew, that this was actually going to happen, that she was going to let a half-demon, half-human kiss her stupid in the middle of her magical space. But something happened -- or maybe it had been happening all along and she just hadn’t noticed. Had been happening since he’d added on that rider about kisses whenever he wanted them at the end of their agreement, and she’d laughed and signed her name.

So she turned her face up to him, letting his mouth come down on hers. 

Bucky molded her to him, his arms wrapping around her like a vise, close enough that she felt the length of his heat against her leg, even through their clothes. And his mouth was firm, gentle, but urgent. His tongue probed at her lips, tasting the seam and she gasped, which was enough of an invitation for him to delve into her mouth. 

Wanda wasn’t entirely inexperienced with kissing, there were May fairs and she’d gone on three dates with men who expressed an interest in kissing her, and she’d let them, but she’d never felt anything, not really, aside from a vague embarrassment, and a somewhat less vague concern that they hadn’t brushed their teeth recently.

She’d been kissed, but it had never been like this before. She’d never found herself lifting her leg to rub against the side of his thigh, practically swooning, leaning back against his arm, letting him bend her backward, until her hair was hanging down, and her eyes were tight-closed, and the only thing she was aware of at all was the pressure of his mouth on hers, the heat of his body against hers--

“What the _hell_ are you doing?”

_Pietro._

Wanda opened her eyes just in time for Bucky to drop her on the floor. 

***

“Of all the dumbass things you’ve done, this has got to be the dumbest,” the man said. His hair was white, with darker roots, and his eyes were blue as ice. Taller than Wanda, but not as tall as Bucky, he was glaring, not at Bucky, but at Wanda. “Waiting until I go out to carry--”

“I’m not _carrying on anything_ ,” Wanda protested, holding out her hand and letting Bucky help her up. “This is Bucky. My familiar.” She gave Bucky’s hand a squeeze. “I might have accidentally bound a half-demon in my contract.”

The man switched his glare to Bucky, and Bucky felt his cat’s fur and tail stiffen and swell. Here was a man who was angry, and also a man who was _dangerous_.

“Bucky, this is my brother,” Wanda said. “Pietro.”

Neither of them told any lies about how it was nice to meet the other. At least Pietro wasn’t a liar, Bucky supposed.

“You did… run that by me again? And I change my mind about you having an affair with a stranger as being the dumbest thing. _This_ is the dumbest thing.” 

“Whatever I’ve done is always the dumbest thing,” Wanda sighed. “Despite how it looks, give him a chance, would you? I just finished brewing a protection potion so strong, it’ll last a _month_ , Pietro, think of it.”

“So why was he shoving his tongue down your throat?” Pietro still hadn’t acknowledged Bucky as a person at all. No greetings, no nod, no nothing.

“Because it’s my due,” Bucky snapped. “Deals with demons, and all that.” He gave Pietro a smirk, all teeth and no sentiment.

Pietro was suddenly pushing into Bucky’s personal space, faster than even Bucky’s demon-eyes could track him. Wanda had said her brother was an Adept, hadn’t she? Fast as quicksilver.

“Would you two stop that,” Wanda complained, inserting her hip between them and then pushing them apart. “The situation is what it is, Pietro, we may as well use it to our advantage. He’s Bound, you can’t hurt him without hurting me, and while I know sometimes you’re tempted--”

Pietro took a step back, which was good, because Bucky was about ready to start punching. Pietro might not have been able to hurt Bucky without also hurting his sister, but Bucky wasn’t quite so limited.

Except he would be hurting Wanda. Just a different sort of pain. Bucky let the tension ease out of his body. Mostly. If he still had a cat tail, it would be lashing back and forth.

“Given some practice,” Bucky drawled, “we could make at least four potion batches a day.”

“It’s a good thing, Pietro,” Wanda said. “Don’t ruin it for me.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see about that,” Pietro said. “I have one more delivery to make. I stopped by for something to eat.”

“There’s some lunch still,” Wanda said, biting at her lip. “I can get an energizing potion ready by the time you’re done eating, I think.”

Bucky grinned. “I’ll help.”

“No more kissing,” Pietro said, shaking a finger. 

Bucky rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to answer that. He’d take his kisses when and where he chose.

On the other hand, the way Wanda was eyeing him surreptitiously, with a glare for her meddlesome brother, it might just be the thing.

There was nothing quite so tempting about the fruit you weren’t supposed to have.

***

Pietro took the potion, even though Wanda had expected him to spurn it, made as it was with demonic influence. He drank it and then blinked as it took immediate effect. “Now this is more like it,” he said, and Wanda could see that he was vibrating with excitement. With the need to run and run and run.

“Go on,” Wanda said. “Run it out.”

Pietro whooped, took off, and Wanda went back to the small table they used as a sorting and delivery station and picked up the bag, holding it out for him to snatch up when he realized he’d forgotten it.

“What, you didn’t see that one coming,” she teased him as he zipped by.

 _He really is very fast, and very noisy_ , Bucky thought at her from his patch in the sunlight, where he was all stretched out, the very image of feline contentment.

“He’s a boy, what do you expect,” Wanda said, without any real heat in it. She’d lost that jealousy a long time ago, with what little girls and little boys were made of. Made terms with it. Quiet, peaceful, tranquil. Her mother had wanted her to be those things, to be a good girl, to do as she was bid, and she was always more biddable than Pietro, who was wild and rebellious and brave and careless.

Wanda wasn’t any of those things. Yet, below the surface, boiled rage and injustice the desire to do something about it, and now it seemed like she was better able to channel those things into her spellcasting, like Bucky had unlocked something that she’d tamped, deep down inside her.

That he’d made her, somehow, _complete_.

“So,” she said, looking out the window at where she knew her brother was, even if she could no longer see him. “What happens now?”

“Now?” Bucky asked, and he was back in his human form. “Now we pick up where we left off with those kisses. I expect adequate payment for my efforts.”

“I’m not sure it’s _payment_ at all,” Wanda teased. “I think you want to kiss me because you just want to.”

He was deep in her personal space now, looming in a way that made her feel protected, rather than intimidated. “And what of it?”

“Then say so, and don’t bother hiding behind payment, and _owed_. That’ll sour milk fast and love faster.”

“Love? Is that what you think this is? Demons don’t love.”

“But humans do,” Wanda pointed out. “And you’re half human, as well.”

She sensed the uncertainty in him, the belief that he was a monster and unworthy and despised or used wherever he went.

He considered her words for longer than she really thought was necessary, then asked her, “So, what do you want?”

“I want you to kiss me,” she said, “because you want to.”

Bucky’s kiss was achingly tender, lips touching hers in the lightest of brushes, like the fluttering of butterfly wings. Breathtaking, and something more. Something that made her dizzy, that practically forced her arms to work, to clasp around his neck, to pull him down to her, and to open her mouth to his. Wanda clutched at him, off balance and strange and suddenly molten hot.

The way his lips brushed hers, soft and subtle and sweet, the smoky flavor of his tongue against hers, the brazen friction between their bodies, was all new and exciting and terrifying and ancient and sacred and profane all at the same time. 

She inhaled with a soft moan, and then he kissed her again. Really kissed her this time, tongue and teeth and his strong hands on her back, pulling her to him until there was no room between them for anything else. She was beautiful to him, and he made her beautiful, and she had been born that way just to please him. She was his.

And he was hers, just as utterly and completely. His body was hot, hard, and needy against hers and she let herself be held up by him.

Then he stepped back and looked at her face, like he was trying to find a hint of an answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

Wanda answered it anyway.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “It’s love.”

And so it was.


End file.
